TRAVELOGUE

In this travelogue, I cover my journey up to the white north and my experience hunting down the fabled Northern Lights or Aurora Boreolis.

Having lived in Stockholm for over 5 years, I was yet to see the fabled Northern lights. It has been quite elusive to me in my previous visits to the North. So five of us decided to embark on a journey above the Arctic circle and hunt it down.

The Journey

From Stockholm, we had to travel about 1200 km north to maximize our chances of finding Northern lights. In the COVID19 era, it did not feel right to fly out to the nearest airport at Luleå or Kiruna, both situated in Sweden’s largest and the northern-most province- Norrbotten. So we booked a coupe for six in SJ’s overnight train to Boden from Stockholm Central. Normally the train is supposed to proceed towards the northern-most mining town of Kiruna but due to track maintenance work stopped at Boden. Here SJ could do a better job notifying route changes to their passengers in advance! From Boden we booked a car rental to further travel up north. Something I realized here is that a driving license is an absolute necessity. For our stay up in the North, we booked a nice cottage via AirBnB on the banks of the Torne river in Pajala.

As evident from the picture above, Norrbotten is already experiencing winter when 1200 kms south, the trees have just decided to start shedding their leaves. So you need to prepare for a -12 to -15 degrees C when you embark upon this trip. Remember, it is even more important since you will be scouting for the lights out in the cold when it is dark and wont necessarily be staying indoors. We started from Stockholm at 18:00 hrs to reach Boden early morning the next day at 06:00. Then Pajala was a further 3.5 hours drive towards the north.

Scouting for the Northern lights

Ye northern lights kidhar hai? Peepal ped ke aagey left le lo ( Transl. Where is this northern lights? Take a left from the banyan tree.)

Here is the thing about Northern lights. You cant drive up to a local and ask him/her which way to go see Northern lights like you would for the Eiffel tower or the Taj Mahal. At the same time you shouldn't necessarily decide to 'wing' it either. You get to see them with some patience and following weather updates.

We kept track on the two main aspects on our smart phones:

Aurora activity:

http://www.aurora-service.eu/

Cloud cover:

https://www.smhi.se/q/Stockholm/2673730

Aurora activity is a general measure of the probability and/or the intensity of the appearance of the Northern lights. It goes on a scale between kp 0 to kp 8. Anything above 3 is considered good above the Arctic circle, provided you are out of city limits where there is a lot of light pollution, rendering the Northern lights invisible. The website updates prediction for every 3 hour window, guided by NASA’s satellites. This measure varied between 1 to 5 during our stay in Pajala. kp 5 is considered really intense, so much that it might be visible from southern latitudes as well. See here

all the talk about Aurora is pointless if the cloud spoils the party

Coming to the second point, all the talk about Aurora is pointless if the cloud spoils the party which exactly happened in our case for two days. Our cottage stood at the right latitude and the right level of Aurora activity. BUT it got densely clouded in the night. That is where we used the cloud cover prediction website which worked reasonably well and provided us locations on the map within a driving distance of 100–200 kms that had clear skies. And to give credit where it is due: Climate prediction works!

Day 1 and a half: You win some, you lose some

So we hopped on to our car to drive towards clear skies in the middle of the night to the middle of nowhere. Something I never thought I would be doing. We reached a hill about 150 kms far from our house at about 1 in the morning, guided by the cloud cover map. We got out to admire the clear sky…. and immediately went back into the car. It was freezing -12 degrees out there. But nevertheless we warmed ourselves by turning on the heater in the car every half hour and continued venturing out to just gaze at the stars.

I had never really seen the sky filled up with so many stars and their clusters.

Having lived in cities (some really polluted ones in that), I had never really seen the sky filled up with so many stars and their clusters. It really made me understand why Astrology was such a big thing in the ancient times. I always thought they were ‘over-imagining’ shapes (or tripping) since I hadn't seen so many stars before. But here, for a short (and very cold) duration I too was able to see what the ancient Indians, Greeks and the Egyptians saw. A clear glance at the endless patterns and shapes of stars before me.

The time it took for me to ponder all the above was enough for my toe nails to start biting from the knee-deep snow I was standing on. So I went inside the car and heated myself up. Coming to the northern lights however, unfortunately this night wasn’t it. We huddled back into our car when the sun rose at 6:00 and went off to sleep in our cottage.

Here is the funny thing about sun rise in the Arctic. The Sun ‘teases’ you for a long time (about 1 hour probably) staying just behind the horizon, flooding enough light to drown out the darkness but yet maintaining a dusky sky. However, it does kill any possibilities of seeing the Northern lights. The sun officially rose at 07:23. Go figure!

We did see a beautiful star-filled sky but with no sign of Aurora. We go home now to fight the next night.

Day 2: Patience is a virtue

We started Day 2 with a more relaxing manner. In the cottages up north here in Sweden, it is very common to have a Sauna annex attached to your cottage. This is basically a closed room walled with wooden planks and filled with steam for people to go in sweat and relax. Something really to try in the winters up here. You usually use a paddle to pour water on the heated rocks to generate the steam and lie there.

After enough relaxation, we decided to take a different destination tonight. We drove a bit south towards the Swedish town of Överkalix since the cloud prediction website suggested here for clear sky. Upon reaching there at 23:00, it felt that this is gonna be another night of no lights and just stars. But we still picked a nice spot overlooking the town from the banks of Kalix river with hope.

After about an hour, my friend pointed out to what seemingly looked like a faint cloud that this maybe the northern lights. I dismissed him because I had seen the images on Google. But then, this guy has seen the real thing so that must be something! So hesitantly, we brought in our camera, fixed it on a tripod and with an exposure time of 15 seconds, my friend captured it:

It turned out that my friend was right. This is definitely it! That was quite not what I was expecting. I was expecting bright green like RGB [0 255 0] green. But those photos on google are mostly taken after being accumulated with longer exposure periods with DSLR cameras, something my stupid eyes cannot fathom.

photos on google are mostly taken after being clicked with longer exposure periods with DSLR cameras

But then this had given us hope. an hour ago, we were like, ‘If we can see stars again that itself is a victory’. Right now, we wanted to take National geographic level photos of the northern lights. My friend whizzes through his smart phone and finds an abandoned mine in the middle of a forest! — far away from the town. This meant clear sky, zero light pollution, a road that can allow vehicles. All after 3 hours of wandering and preparing for the possibility of not seeing the Aurora. Patience is a virtue.

It only got better here. The now abandoned mine had cleared a huge patch of the forest cover in the middle of nowhere. And in that flat piece of land between huge snow+dirt mounds we parked our car. And then the Northern Lights only intensified further!

When was the last time you spent an hour with 4 people without saying a word and not seeing your smartphone? Smartphones and any ‘man-made’ sources of light were put out to adjust our eyes w.r.t the darkness outside so that you see the Aurora more clearly.

When was the last time you spent an hour with 4 people without saying a word and not seeing your smartphone?

The northern lights dont necessarily stay constant. They tend to ‘dance’ around the sky taking different forms and shapes. U was a very common shape. It was very similar to the shape evolution you observe when you pour oil on a jar of water. The activity was quite intense here and we enjoyed the sights for another couple of hours and by the time we reached home it was 5 in the morning. We had won tonight.

Day 3–4: Home delivery and Bonus

Now we had see the main thing we had ventured out for. We decided to spend sometime exploring the surrounding areas. We spent some time in an abandoned smelting plant and visited a Moose farm. Moose/Elk is the national animal of Sweden. Apparently they survive in these unforgiving climate just by eating bark off the trees. They shed their antlers once every winter which weighed about 20–25 kg. This particular one in the picture is Oscar and apparently is a ladies’ man or so we are told. The ones in the north are taller with long legs to navigate the snow it seems.

they survive in this unforgiving climate just by eating bark off the trees

The man running the Moose farm explained to us the relationship between the Swedish Government and animal husbandry in the north. Apparently this gentleman has the rights on hundreds of acres of land up here to run his farm without any involvement from the government, something very foreign to me as an Indian. Reminded me of Leo Tolsoy’s short story on the same.

On the final night, the clouds cleared up above our cottage as well. We were no longer required to drive searching for clear skies anymore. We just walked with tea outside our cottage to the banks of river Torne to see the northern lights one final time. For all the running around from the previous nights, on our last night,we received a home delivery from the sky.

We took the same train back from Boden at 22:00 hrs and reached Stockholm the next day at 10:00. In all this, we were social-distanced pretty well. Apart from each other in the group, we interacted only with two other people in the entire trip. I guess that makes it a COVID19-proof trip!

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